Play Before Plan: Games for the Public and Planners to Value the Street

Abstract

Games invite people to escape reality, test new skills, and have fun. Location-based games can also encourage players to explore their environment and make new connections between what they see around them and what they envision to be possible. I designed three mobile-based games that challenge urban planners and policymakers to experience the complex cultural economies of Rye Lane, a rapidly evolving, multicultural London high street. The games invite players to learn from its micro businesses in ways that can inform more nuanced conceptions of the street and policies to support it. The goal of the games is to foster productive feedback loops between street-level practices and city-making policies.

Keywords:

• urban planning
• street
• multiculturalism
• mobile games
• citizen data creation
• participation

Note on Contributor

Adriana Valdez Young is the head of learning and culture at littleBits, a platform for democratizing hardware. She is the founder of English for Action. She holds a MSc in City Design & Social Science from the London School of Economics.

Notes

1 All interviewees, with the exception of the architects from the AJ and Philips charrette, have been assigned aliases in order to remain anonymous. 

2 I use “Peckham” to refer to the neighborhood that comprises the commercial hub Peckham Town Center and its complementary residential cluster, Peckham Community Council, which comprises Peckham Ward and the southern section of Livesey Ward. The Peckham and Nunhead Area Action Plan is more extensive, and includes the above areas, in addition to Nunhead and Peckham Rye Wards. 

3 In a 1991 study of shopping habits of Southwark residents, 26 percent of the borough's residents used Rye Lane to buy household goods, 63 percent because of its location, and 21 percent for its selection of shops (Southwark Council, 1992). 

4 From Rye Lane, you can arrive at King's Cross Station in 23 minutes by rail and can reach Oxford Circus in 53 minutes on the No.12 bus (Transport for London, 2012). Thirty-six percent of Peckham residents rely on buses to get to work, 8 percent walk, and 20 percent use rail (ONS, n.d.). 

5 The northern end of Rye Lane links to London Cycle Route 22 along the route of the former Surrey Canal towards central London (Cycle Streets, 2012). 

6 For a snapshot of trade activity around McDonald's, see the video clip in Arrivalocity, location #4. 

7 “White flight”—the exodus of white middle-class residents from central urban areas towards the suburbs—has afflicted post-WWII American cities, and more recently cities in Northern Europe (Avila, 2005). 

8 Global migration to London has intensified in the past 20 years. The foreign-born population doubled from one to two million during 1998–2008 (LSE, 2009). Peckham's proportion of foreign-born residents (42 percent) is almost twice that of London overall (25 percent) (ONS, n.d.). 

9 Within The Lane ward where Rye Lane is located, a young and economically active population is leading the majority. In the most recently available census data, 73 percent of The Lane residents are within working age (16–64) and 80 percent of those categorized as economically active have full-time jobs, 28 percent of whom are highly skilled,10 percent engaged in elementary occupations, and 9 percent are self-employed (Nomis, 2003).

10 In addition, the license holder is not required to be the salesperson, opening a legal loophole for people to work at a stall without having applied for a license or possessing legal rights to work. 

11 Both Mark and Gwenyth cited that the leaseholders and owners of subdivided shops inflated rent levels of the street, making it unappealing for chain stores to enter the local market. In the report by Gort Scott and UCL (2010: 25), average monthly retail rent in Southwark was recorded at £1372 in 2009 compared to the highest average rate of £3189 in Kensington and Chelsea.

12 One custom tailored clothing boutique was looted, but rioters later returned the stolen goods (The Telegraph, 2011). 

13 7scenes is an open source storytelling platform for GPS tours and games that allows for customizable content to be programmed and freely accessed via its mobile app for the iPhone, iPad, and Android phones. As content is GPS-activated, players must be on Rye Lane with 7Scenes open to discover and play the games. When players search for nearby scenes, the Play Before You Plan game series appears as browsable content on a mobile device. A Web version of the games and tours is also viewable, but games cannot be played. Games are downloadable at playbeforeplan.tumblr.com and 7Scenes.com via iTunes. 

14 See The People's Supermarket for more on this model (The People's Supermarket, 2012). 

15 In addition to the elaborate CCTV scheme and community policing program in place since 2000, these educational programs can contribute to reducing crime, addressing the risk factors of social exclusion and low-level literacy associated with youth crime (Arts Council of England, 2003). 

16 Precedents for media education and production centers include London Hackspace in Hackney and Urban Development in Stratford (Hackspace, 2012; Urban Development, 2012).